The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

I suffer from something called Ménière’s disease—don’t worry, you cannot get it from reading my blog. The symptoms of Ménière’s include hearing loss, tinnitus (a constant ringing sound), and vertigo. There are many medical theories about its cause: too much salt, caffeine, or alcohol in one’s diet, too much stress, and allergies. Thus, I’ve worked to limit control all these factors.

However, I have another theory. As a venture capitalist, I have to listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs pitch their companies. Most of these pitches are crap: sixty slides about a “patent pending,” “first mover advantage,” “all we have to do is get 1% of the people in China to buy our product” startup. These pitches are so lousy that I’m losing my hearing, there’s a constant ringing in my ear, and every once in while the world starts spinning.

To prevent an epidemic of Ménière’s in the venture capital community, I am evangelizing the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. While I’m in the venture capital business, this rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc.

Ten slides. Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting—and venture capitalists are very normal. (The only difference between you and venture capitalist is that he is getting paid to gamble with someone else’s money). If you must use more than ten slides to explain your business, you probably don’t have a business. The ten topics that a venture capitalist cares about are:

Problem

Your solution

Business model

Underlying magic/technology

Marketing and sales

Competition

Team

Projections and milestones

Status and timeline

Summary and call to action

Twenty minutes. You should give your ten slides in twenty minutes. Sure, you have an hour time slot, but you’re using a Windows laptop, so it will take forty minutes to make it work with the projector. Even if setup goes perfectly, people will arrive late and have to leave early. In a perfect world, you give your pitch in twenty minutes, and you have forty minutes left for discussion.

Thirty-point font. The majority of the presentations that I see have text in a ten point font. As much text as possible is jammed into the slide, and then the presenter reads it. However, as soon as the audience figures out that you’re reading the text, it reads ahead of you because it can read faster than you can speak. The result is that you and the audience are out of synch.

The reason people use a small font is twofold: first, that they don’t know their material well enough; second, they think that more text is more convincing. Total bozosity. Force yourself to use no font smaller than thirty points. I guarantee it will make your presentations better because it requires you to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well. If “thirty points,” is too dogmatic, the I offer you an algorithm: find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s your optimal font size.

So please observe the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. If nothing else, the next time someone in your audience complains of hearing loss, ringing, or vertigo, you’ll know what caused the problem. One last thing: to learn more about the zen of great presentations, check out a site called Presentation Zen by my buddy Garr Reynolds.

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!

Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. Formerly, he was an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google and chief evangelist of Apple. He is also the author of The Art of Social Media, The Art of the Start, APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur, Enchantment, and nine other books. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

This regime makes presentations better. Thanks. Still, ppt is a monologue at core – unable to adjust to a welcome, hopefully, new idea-detour that could arise between slide 4 and 5 making 6,7…obsolete.

Guy Kawasaki: As a venture capitalist, I have to listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs pitch their companies. Most of these pitches are crap: sixty slides about a “patent pending,” “first mover advantage,” “all we have to do is get 1% of…

Guy Kawasaki (author of such titles as Selling the Dream – another must read book) has a new blog.
One of his first posts really rings true – about the use (and abuse) of PowerPoint.
I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of Powe…

Welcome to the tactfully tactless world of blogging! (Per the ‘you’re/your’ comment above…)
Since it’s Sunday, some Sunday School words come to mind about making “a man an offender for a word.” (KJV, Isaiah 29:11, 12)
Gimme a break. Blogging is best when it is organic, fluid, and spontaneous. This is part of the potency of it all. If Christine can’t handle a typo or grammatical faux pas, she should read something other than your (or is it ‘you’re?’) blog (or anyone else’s for that matter). Did you get anything else out of the post, Christine?
Forgive the in-your-face comment about the comment, but what a poster child case-in-point for blogging arrogance your comment is.
Great post, Guy. It made me think about my posts. That’s something cool to take away from your blog.
I look forward to reading more. Keep it up!

Very good post. I agree that PP presentations should be made as painless as possible. Fabrice Grinda’s “Fund Raising 101” (http://www.fabricegrinda.com/?p=27) pretty much deals with the same topic, but suggests even fewer slides.
Edward Tufte also has some general presentation tips: A summary can be found at: http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/presentations.html
What’s your take on these?

I recently finnished reading Guy Kawasaki’s “The Art of the Start”, a book full of good advices for any entrepreneur. I especially liked the chapter called “The Art of Being a Mensch”. Too seldom I encounter any referrences to being

I recently finished reading Guy Kawasaki’s “The Art of the Start”, a book full of good advices for any entrepreneur. I especially liked the chapter called “The Art of Being a Mensch”. Too seldom I encounter any references to being

I completely agree on you, especially about the font size. I always use at least 30 points.
And I more and more tend to use slides with only two or three words on it. It’s only a guideline.
Watch the presentations of Steve Jobs and learn. Leaner is better!
And: Welcome to the blogging community, Guy! I really appreciate this.

Guy,
First, welcome. I always tell people that you’re the proto-blogger, from back in the days of the EvangeList. So, let Winer take credit as being the first blogger, you’re the first I read regularly (Dave was second…). Good to have you here as an actual blogger.
10/20/30. Love it. Simple, memorable and it makes sense!
I’ll be using it and sharing it.

Guy, great to have you in blogging space. I have been involved in venture capital for 10+ years and agree totally with your post. Why do entrepreneurs try to educate e.g. VC specialized in mobile industry with market data rather than explain some insights which have enabled them to set up a business with true competitive advantage.
mikko

I found that Kawasaki’s brand new blog is already helpful, in a backhanded way. I have been working with a number of startups in the past decade, and I continuously struggle with founders about their powerpoint addictions: too many bullets,…

I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. As a special service to Lotus Marketing: I…

Great post. Point is – people have short attention span. They want information quickly, without the hassles of noise (too much data) or errors (not enough knowledge).
I have my 100/10/1 rule: 100 pages detailed plan (in writing), 10 minutes talk (PowerPoint), and 1 sentence elevator’s pitch (the gist of the idea). The detailed plan forces understanding. The presentation presents the highlights. And the Elevator’s Pitch generates interest. I found that I failed when I didn’t use the 100/10/1 rule, and I succeeded when I did. Try it out. It works.

I also saw the identity 2.0 presentation after an email from Guy’s mailing list, and based on that idea, I did a presentation at work. It went wonderful and has caused a great deal of impact. I found that one of the best things is that people have no other choice than to pay attention to the presenter, instead of reading ahead of the presentation.

I found that Kawasaki’s brand new blog is already helpful, in a backhanded way. I have been working with a number of startups in the past decade, and I continuously struggle with founders about their powerpoint addictions: too many bullets,…

What not to do in a presentation:
http://static.flickr.com/28/58697220_0f5db5fe00.jpg
If you have a slide that looks like that, you suck. That’s all there is to it.
I also recommend using Keynote. It came along just in time to save my life, because if I’d had to do one more WWDC talk with PowerPoint, I’d have shot myself.
-jcr

Gr8 post!
Where would u include finance in those slides. I tried to contain my presentation in 10 slides but that is one more slide i have to put in. Last discussion I had with some angel investors, whole meeting turned in discussion rather than power pt controlling the flow.

From The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint: Its quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. [] Sure, you have an hour time slot, but you&#8217…

Guy, do me a favor: as someone who has to listen to a lot of VC-funded startups give their pitches *after* they’ve gotten your money, I beg you to force all your funded startups to observe the 10 .ppt rule.
I’ll give them 30 minutes and don’t care about type size, but the majority of funded companies seem to think 28 slides and 60 minutes is what they need to convince me that they are patent pending, holistic, proactive and will sell to 90% of the Fortune 5000 – let alone China.
So, if you make those who want you money stick to a renamed elevator pitch rule, please do so with your funded companies as well.
Regards, John P.

So yes, great advice. I have been attemptinng to follow it for years.
So how come every funding source says “nice presentation, send us your business plan” and then they expect a 90 page bplan that itemizes everything down to postage and is projected quarterly over 5 years. C’mon guys. Anything over 8 months is a guess. can’t you multiply by 2 for each year just like the poor entrepreneur that puts those numbers together?

Although I’ve only seen a few pitch presentations, I would say that instead of making the rule 10 slides, make it 10 concepts, because sometimes you may want to have say 3 or 4 slides to convey a concept.
That and I’ve always been a huge fan of the Steve Jobs keynotes. 🙂 Great Article. There are far to many bad presentations out there.

Edward Tufte dislikes PowerPoint and explains why in an article about the contribution of PowerPoint to the Columbia disaster.
My other models for NASA are Feynmans lectures on physics, and the A3 page (or 11 by 17 in) folded in half. You can…

Guy Kawasaki has posted some great guidelines for delivering effective PowerPoint presentations at his blog (see it here). He calls his theory the 10/20/30 Rule. It goes something like this:
No presentation should be bigger than 10 slides, last lon…

My fellow Corante Web Hub member Stowe Boyd posted about the 10/20/30 rules of Powerpoint, which originally comes from Guy Kawasaki. Stowe actually extends Guys idea with a 1/10/20/30 notion, meaning that each slide should make one part of your

Presentation Guru Guy Kawasaki introduces a rule called 10/20/30 PowerPoint rule in one of his recent blog posts. What is it? He describes, a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font …

Let’s keep in mind folks, following these rules will just make your presentation better, it won’t make your business model not suck.
Also, a big fat no-prize to the person who can use “bozosity” the most in a coherent blog post. 😉

Guy Kawasaki has a post on his blog about the 10/20/30 (10 slides/20 minutes/30 words) rule of good PowerPoint presentations. (Not the first time hes done this particular pitch but then again, Martin Luther King Jr. did a whole bunch of…

presumably you do have Meniere’s & not benign vertigo (sounds like it). I suspect you would have looked extensively. The reason I ask, is the tx of BPV with mechanical maneuvers to move the “ear rocks” — see links. (info barter – you re: powerpoint; me re: tim hain, md website):
Menieres – http://www.tchain.com/otoneurology/disorders/menieres/menieres.html
BPPV –
http://www.tchain.com/otoneurology/disorders/bppv/bppv.html

An article making the rounds today discusses effective Power Point presentations for venture capitalists. It talks about a 10/20/30 rule of Power Point. It’s an interesting article and one I am sure works with venture capitalists, but I’ve found some t…

The 10/20/30 rule seems pretty rudimentary, why didn’t anyone come up with this before?
It seems it could be very innovative so i’m definately willing to try [for the most part] to abide by those three simple rules and hopefully everything will turn out spectacularly.

Sifting through bookmarks again. This time I came across a bunch of great posts on entrepreneurism, hiring, and advice on fundraising. If you’re doing a startup now or thinking about building a new business and haven’t read some of these posts, check t…

Guy Kawasaki, PowerPoint 10-20-30 rule it’s all over the blogosphere, and deservedly so, as Guy really nails down some of the long time obstacles and myths about effective presentation design and delivery. What Guy Kawasaki advocates is nothing more th…

Guy Kawasaki, who has now launched a blog, has some good advice for anyone considering a powerpoint presentation: … I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last n…

Guy Kawasaki wants you to clean up your Power Point mess. As a venture capitalist, I have to listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs pitch their companies. Most of these pitches are crap: sixty slides about a “patent pending,” “first mover…

If you’re like me, it takes about 3 weeks to comfortably settle into a new year so that I’m not writing 2005 on my checks…. It will soon debut “Wow House” a reality series to be broadcast online and that’s only the beginning of its original prog…

If you’re like me, it takes about 3 weeks to comfortably settle into a new year so that I’m not writing 2005 on my checks…. It will soon debut “Wow House” a reality series to be broadcast online and that’s only the beginning of its original prog…

Happy to see you in the blog-o-sphere, as I have visited Rules for Revolutionaries more than once this past year and have been listening to ‘Art of the Start’ off and on.
On 10-20-30, Good general rule to follow, but have seen some spectacular dissidents as of recent ~ http://www.identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/
Cheers,
Gregg

One of the best takeaways from the Ad-Tech conference a few weeks ago for me was a point Guy Kawasaki made in his very entertaining keynote presentation about his 10/20/30 rule for marketing revolutionaries on using powerpoint. 10 slides 20

Flying text, sound effects, animation and retina-burning colour combinations are included in PowerPoint presentations for one reason: because theyre there.
In the interest of looking more professional, polished and creative, we&#8…

Ok, so Im way late with this. Ill blame CES Anyhow, here is my list of some interesting articles for the week ending December 31, 2005: Hugh Macleod works his magic – David Sifry. Good and Bad Procrastinators – Paul…

Guy Kawasaki makes a good case for The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint.
I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font …

I have been making slideshows since 1970, back when it took 4 hours to make the original art for a color slide. PowerPoint is very good, and fast, for making outstanding slide shows. I agree with Guy on his approach to slide shows. Business pitches are a little different than training programs, but there is much more to developing a presentation.
Review this article I wrote regarding visual communication http://www.jrneaves.com/instructional_graphics.htm.
The biggest abuse I have witnessed is the use of “stupid” text animation and spot animations that add no value to the visual communication (i.e. “the dancing rabbit”, “barking dog”, and so forth.
The most important part of the presentation is the complete, expert knowledge of the subject matter by the presenter. Complete knowledge of the subject matter eliminates the need for “wordy” slides and reading the slide to the audiance from the slide, normally with your back turned to the audiance. Remember, the slide show is there to support the message and information transfer. It is NOT the message.
PowerPoint is a tool. It does not relieve the presenter of being and integral part of the presentation and message transfer, regardless of whether it is a business presentation or a training program.

In my experience the best presentations have hardly any text in them. I was once told a great presentation consists of three consistent parts: Hook, Point, Illustration and ends with Punch.
So add to the 10/20/30 Rule and you’ve got a nice guideline to entertaining through quick and precise storytelling.

unfortunatley, i have to give most of my presentations to non-native speakers of english. sometimes it seems that these folks need to actually read the slidesto understand what i am saying.
that might not sound right, but i have constantly seen that the flashier and heavier the presentation, the more successful the result. and it never matters how good my story is, if i try the 10/20/30 i lose. if i try the 100/60/10 with a ton of graphics too, i win.
really sucks.
that’s why i prefer to be a writer.

Good tips. While for a somewhat different audience, and old (not necessarily computer-related), I find these helpful as well:
“Giving a Talk,” Prof. Bruce Randall Donald at Dartmouth College: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~brd/Teaching/Giving-a-talk/giving-a-talk.html
Great stuff.

10-20-30 I love it but what about the “people” who insist on printing out the powerpoint to read it and complain that they can’t follow it because there’s not enough in there? Are we all now supposed to create a complementary supporting document too? Maybe the problem is as Tufte says – powerpoint itself?
thx.

I’m starting to believe I chose the most boring degree to persue ever, business management. If it wasn’t for Arthur Andersen screwing a bunch of companies up, there wouldn’t be much to talk about in class and my textbooks would…

I’m starting to believe I chose the most boring degree to persue ever, business management. If it wasn’t for Arthur Andersen screwing a bunch of companies up, there wouldn’t be much to talk about in class and my textbooks would…

This is very useful information for everyone! Thank you for sharing this. I also got a chance to hear this from Guy first hand from his presentation at San Jose State University.
In addition, I took notes on his presentation and posted them here on my blog: http://e-bizz.blogspot.com/2006/02/10-steps-of-entrepreneurship-guy.html
Thanks again Guy for all of your incite and great advice!
Christopher Salazar

Read a nice post on Seth’s blog the other day. He’s right: creating a good PowerPoint presentation is not that easy. Making it interactive is one possibility. Taking the 10/20/30 rule into consideration another one.

Hackoff.com author and serial entrepreneur Tom Evslin has been posting a nice VC Primer from an Entrepreneur’s POV. He is on target with most of his thoughts and his recent post regarding VC presentations is a good read. Guy has also chimed in on VC …

Re: your comment – “The only difference between you and venture capitalist is that he is getting paid to gamble with someone else’s money.”
I think you’ve described a commonality between the VC and the entrepreneur, rather than a difference.
The reality check many would-be amazing entpreneurs (and all their staff who natter for a raise before actually producing anything) should get a smack over the head with is that once they’ve got in VC funds, THEY, themselves, are being paid to gamble with someone else’s money.

I suck at presentations.. and Im working hard to improve myself. Ive come a long way from where I was a couple of years ago, but hey, its a work in progress.
A Client told me the other day this uebertruth: NEVER use the same presen…

Many presentations, especially in the insurance business, are not exciting. Yet there are many resources for quality presentations. We have found these posts both short (like a good presentation) and helpful. Guy Kawasaki – The 10/20/40 Rule Guy Kawasa…

Hey, this is kind of cool. Next week I’m going to be doing a short presentation at the San Francisco Ruby Meetup. The topic is how to contribute to the Ruby on Rails open source project. Because, you know, after just one patch being accepted I’m a total e

I’m not the first person to point out that Microsoft’s mainstay meeting and presentation application Powerpoint is usually anathema to any sort of useful communication, and that most speakers rely on it as a crutch rather than a memory jog, but I just …

Latest Update: Expanded and improved a lot, with a whole lot of help from Gary at Thumbrella.
Giving a presentation can be a great way to use a bit more creativity at work than you might usually be able to do – or it can be a chance to drone on at the fr

I found the 10/20/30 rule to be the most useful part of your entire book. I had the opportunity to put it into action a few months ago at a (VANJ) Venture Association of New Jersey Event.
As predicted there was no working projector, no cd- rom in for the laptop, and no microphone. Even though we were told to expect all three.
Having read your book, I was fully prepared to belt out my presentation with no slides and I proceeded to follow your instructions to the letter.
The result? Well since the topic of the luncheon was “Pitching to VC’s” I was honored to have the keynote speaker Chris Sugden of Edison Venture Fund remark to the audience that my speech was a perfect example of how to deliver!
As a result I made two great Angel connections at the luncheon.
Fundraising has not been easy, but you’ve helped clear a lot of the fogginess and I thank you for you effort, advice and enthusiasm.
– NC

I was looking at Guy’s Law of Premoney valuation. I am curious why he has -$250K for each MBA. Is this tongue in cheek, or will an MBA truly destroy company value early on? If yes, what are the characteristics of the typical MBA that would put this drag on the organization?

Everyone’s attended useless presentations. My guess is that 90% of all the speakers I’ve heard have fallen into one or more of the gaffs below.Which is sad. Hundreds of attendees have paid and given up time to learn something only to …

10 20 30!The best advice is often the simplest; Remember three numbers Apply what they represent You’ll make better PowerPoint Presentations. Guy Kawasaki tells you how…The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint – Guy Kawasaki (It’s just one of his Top 10

Hi Guy. This is totally unrelated to your main content, but still relevant to you 😉
I got Meniere’s disease too. Mine attacks in the rainy season — when (I’m guessing) my colds clog my allergic nose, overloading the balancing mechanism in my ear.
Doctors have recommended a slew of meds but in the end, it’s really just self-management as you say. I cut down on coffee and chocolate and inhale steam whenever my sinuses feel clogged.
Ciao!
************************
Ben,
I’m so glad to hear (no pun intended) you have your Meniere’s figured out. I get about 3 attacks of vertigo per year. Maybe God is telling you to move to Hawaii! 🙂
Aloha!
Guy

I came across Guy Kawasakis 10/20/30 Rule for PowerPoint again today and I was really surprised that I hadnt referenced this in the past. Like most people, Ive sat through more than my fair share of really lousy presentations in w…

hmmm… this is good. even though I am not sure about the font 30 part. I am a font 24 or a font 20 user and tend to think that I am pretty effective..

Happenings of the UnderEmployed by Kevin McDonald
August 11, 2006 at 9:14 am - Reply

Five things to do at the start of every sales demo/presentation

Five Things To Do At The Start Of Every Sales Demo/Presentation While working for SAP nearly a decade ago there was a Demo training us sales engineers were asked to attend. I can’t recall the name of the company that…

No longer does Really Bad PowerPoint kill only brain cells and patience. Now it kills US soldiers. I have resisted commenting on Really Bad PowerPoint here because so many others do it better. Seth Godin coined the phrase, and Garr

I’m an admitted bullet point cripple. I can’t seem to avoid them since it’s how I think… hierarchical and logical. One of the resources that assisted me with my Powerpoint Presentations is Cliff Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points. I have the freely distributed PDF if you’d like to see it. His approach is to make your point visually with your presentation – not with text. The science behind it is that people remember visuals but not text. Let your pictures do the talking… and talk about your pictures.
Regards,
Doug

Everything You Wanted to Know About Getting a Job in Silicon Valley But Didn’t Know Who to Ask

by: Guy Kawasaki Many people ask me for advice about getting a job in Silicon Valley, so heres the inside scoop. Not everyone will agree with this advice, and some will outright deny what Im saying, but if you use…

All too true, even in Europe where communication is in English, which the majority of the participants use as their second language. The objective should be clarity above all and yet people bog themselves down with dozens of slides which the presenter more or less, reads. The result is – the audience reads faster than the presenter speaks and when finished they go to sleep until the next slide comes up (if the presenter is lucky and they haven’t passed into a deeper comatose state). I try to convince my clients to ditch bullet points completely and am surprised at how many still respond “…but what do we print out at the end?”

many people have this silly perception that the thicker your report or the more PPT slides you show, the more intellectual and “great” you are. Sigh… I fall asleep after the 10th slide and your article couldn’t have been timelier!

Big time venture capitalists have hundreds, if not thousands, of business plans sent to them from aspiring entrepreneurs every month. As an entrepreneur looking for funding from venture capitalists, you would count yourself fortunate if one of them sin…

I hate PowerPoint. More precisely, I hate my PowerPoint. Granted, I know the rules, but apparently, I also like to sound of my own voice and the look of my own words. Conceptually, I well understand that less is more

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint (tags: presentations business) The Zen of Business Plans (tags: business startup) Blue Flavor (almost) a Year Later D. Keith Robinson reflects on the first year of running a business (tags: business webdesign) Real Wire…

Excellent rule!
You hit in on the head.
I laughed when you mentioned the 10 point type. I saw one of those recently. I read ahead.
It is a bad “persuasion” presentation when you don’t take the necessary time to truly know your topic and just use your powerpoints as MAJOR points.
Keep up the great posts!
Zachary Romero
www.profitableink.com
Transforming Words Into Gold

No tinnitus. no vertigo and no hearing loss anymore for our VC-Audition. Thanks, Guy, we just pressed our presentation to 10 slides with big letters – and that was a real good exercise. Point out the most important topics, forget the line of explanations, the special developed graphics and so on.
It will be interesting to see and report, how our European VC-People accept such a presentation. I think, they are not used to 10 slides, so you get attention – but in Europe they might think you took it a bit to lazy. I’ll report on this in a month.
amprice is the fastest growing online-marketplace in Germany, based on the Merchands input to develop a place, were they like to deal. We are building the community, which was lost at other marketplaces. And it works!

In my experience the best presentations have hardly any text in them. I was once told a great presentation consists of three consistent parts: Hook, Point, Illustration and ends with Punch.
So add to the 10/20/30 Rule and you’ve got a nice guideline to entertaining through quick and precise storytelling.

Last week I did a couple of presentations (on Community Building and Competitive Intelligence) at WebmasterWorlds Pubcon, and caught the opening keynote session by Guy Kawasaki. Guy is a funny and engaging speaker, and a good choice to kick of…

I recently sat through a 75 minute Power Point presentation with over 165 slides!
5 years ago when the speaker started out he had 15 slides.
He was a lot better speaker 5 years ago – at least I could remember the points he made.
Now it’s a blur.
We’re all infected with “more is better” to a fault.
You’ve hit the nail right on the head with this one.
Warmly,
Patrick McEvoy
President
Rainmaker Gateway
http://www.rainmakergateway.com

Audio of the Day: VV Show #39 – Guy Kawasaki Originally uploaded by divedi. Guy Kawasaki’s keynote was inspiring. The powerpoint-driven conference meets the un-conference keynoter. It’s a wonderful treat when you get more out of ten slides with two-word

In the last couple of months more and more bloggers have been catching onto the power of [digg](http://www.digg.com) and [Netscape](http://www.netscape.com). Bloggers have realized that if they get their blog on the homepage of digg or Netscape thousan…

I always tell people that you’re the proto-blogger, from back in the days of the EvangeList. So, let Winer take credit as being the first blogger, you’re the first I read regularly. Good to have you here as an actual blogger.

Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting and venture capitalists are very normal. (The only difference between you and venture capitalist is that…

Marketing with Microsoft in the Mid-Atlantic
January 2, 2007 at 7:29 pm - Reply

It’s like alcohol abuse. Most people know that too much content won’t do them any good and yet so many will still go out and make a bloody idiot of themselves in front of large groups of people. Some now and then; others at every given opportunity. There should be a health warning on every PowerPoint packet; “Excess content can cause hearing loss, ringing in the ears or vertigo”.

I have tried to avoid this overly-talked-about subject, but can’t help since Jari asked so kindly: It would be fantastic to hear a bit more about your thoughts on the iPhone, the (positive) challenge it throws on S60 and…

PowerPoint can either make the sale, or kill it.It can either stir an audiences mind, or put them to sleep.It will either keep your audience focused on you, or on the slides that youre trying to talk to them about.I…

Guy Kawasaki, Apple Evangelist turned Venture Capitalist (Garage.com) also blogs. As I was wandering the net, I ran into a posting/rant about Powerpoint presentations. As he tends to see a lot of them, the good, the bad and the ugly, he has…

Great article, and great book in “The Art of the Start.”
My partner and I have found you to be an incredibly helpful resource in our quests as entrepreneurs. I hope to meet you one day to thank you and get you on our side =P.
What a great Guy (no pun intended =P)!

Seth Godin recently reposted his views on how so many companies create really bad powerpoint decks with uninspiring, boring information presentation. His key message – a picture is worth a 1,000 words.
For example:
Can you trust job candidate intervie…

This is one of the best (and easiest) tips on presentation techniques that I’ve heard.
I also think and others may attest to it: Present the best you can, and if you have to, use powerpoint.
http://www.TonyZaki.com

While 10/20/30 is might be good for making pitches, I am not sure this rule would be strictly applicable to all PPT presentations. I think specifially of presentations intent on presenting research results. For a general audience 10/20/30 would be appropriate, but for specialists one must expand that rule to 20 at most.
I would like to suggest a revision to your rule 0/10/20/30 Absolutely 0 animations/ transitions/ or sounds unless they relate directly to the presentation … I can’t tell you how annoying it is to listen to a speaker begin to bumble as they are distracted by animations they forgot about.

And by RE I mean Renaissance Entrepreneur, a term coined and slightly explored in the previous post of this blog. I’m sure many people who read this have already read Guy Kawasaki’s famous 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint; in case you

I have been making slideshows since 1970, back when it took 4 hours to make the original art for a color slide. PowerPoint is very good, and fast, for making outstanding slide shows. I agree with Guy on his approach to slide shows. Business pitches are a little different than training programs, but there is much more to developing a presentation.
Review this article I wrote regarding visual communication http://www.jrneaves.com/instructional_graphics.htm.
The biggest abuse I have witnessed is the use of “stupid” text animation and spot animations that add no value to the visual communication (i.e. “the dancing rabbit”, “barking dog”, and so forth.
The most important part of the presentation is the complete, expert knowledge of the subject matter by the presenter. Complete knowledge of the subject matter eliminates the need for “wordy” slides and reading the slide to the audiance from the slide, normally with your back turned to the audiance. Remember, the slide show is there to support the message and information transfer. It is NOT the message.
PowerPoint is a tool. It does not relieve the presenter of being and integral part of the presentation and message transfer, regardless of whether it is a business presentation or a training program.

First time visitor, found my way here through the links from some local blogs.
Great post and sage words regarding power point and pitching.
I agree with the other comment regarding 0/10/20/30 modification.
Also wanted to mention a rule that has served me well called the 6X6 rule for text slides. No more than 6 bullets per page of 6 words per bullet. This way your bullets are speaking points to remind you what to say and avoid that painful reading from the slide thing.
Alternately a picture really is worth a thousand words and if you can make your point with a picture it can add variety to the presentation.

We see a fair number of formal and informal pitches (presentations to the uninitiated). I was asked to be part of a review panel today my parting advice was the now famous 10-20-30 rule:
10 Slides
20 Minutes
30 Point Font
This rough guide is …

Best presentation on SlideShare is not the Best presentation live!
There is a fundamental mistake presentors make when using visual aids such as powerpoint. They confuse their notes (which is a roadmap to know what to say and in what order), with visual aids (which should only be used when a visual can render a concept more effectively than words).
In most presentations, the “slides” become the notes thus diminishing the value-added of the presenter.
SlideShare presentations however, do not have a presenter. Nobody is sitting next to you to comment on the slides. Therefore it OK to have more text than you would if it were a live presentation.
Nobody would think that a great TV ad could be a great radio ad and vice versa. Therefore, the conclusion is this: the best presentation for slideshare will not be the best one to present live.

Gr8 post!
Where would u include finance in those slides. I tried to contain my presentation in 10 slides but that is one more slide i have to put in. Last discussion I had with some angel investors, whole meeting turned in discussion rather than power pt controlling the flow.

One of the biggest challenges Project Managers (and even Functional Managers) seem to have is that they tend to communicate to executives the same way they communicate with a Business Analyst, Programmer, or Manager. This often results in frustrat…

Came across Guy Kawasakis blog last night. Hes a successful US VC and seems to have a large following in the US. I particularly like his Top 3 posts, which offer good advice for those seeking VC money.
The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint…

I’ve been doing a number of presentations in the past few months and so was very interested when I came across an newspaper article saying: The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster. It should be ditched. —

The year I worked for Dave Snowden’s IBM Cynefin Centre, I was required to use the official Big Blue PowerPoint template. Based on 12pt Arial, the template was impossible to read, even close to the screen. The year after, when Cynefin went independent …

powerpoint is useful when you must interact with the presentation or you must show some multimedia files, animated graphs and so on… if you have to pass a message sometimes is better to use the “ancient”… but useful paper.

This will help me with my power point (I’ve committed a few of those sins in the past). It’s a great tool in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. Most everyone else should stick to a flip chart and magic marker.

When you are preparing a presentation, you have to determine if you are teaching or preaching.
In December, Guy Kawasaki had a great post on how to build a PowerPoint presenation. I recommend you read the entire post, but here are some key points:
Ten …

This regime makes presentations better. Thanks. Still, ppt is a monologue at core – unable to adjust to a welcome, hopefully, new idea-detour that could arise between slide 4 and 5 making 6,7…obsolete.
http://www.arcocarib.com

I just finished writing a speech and building a PowerPoint presentation for a client. (How ubiquitous PowerPoint is these days!) This is a speech designed to persuade the audience to use the services of an organization which they distrust and

I recently attended an errors and omissions insurance seminar that featured a power point. Jealous? I was shocked that people still create power points that are word for word with what the speaker is saying. Please never do that. The

Guy –
You recommend (in your book “The Art of the Start”) that people only use dark colored backgrounds on PowerPoints. I was always told to only use LIGHT colored backgrounds so that meeting attendees could take notes on the printed presentation. Any thoughts on this?

Nothing really important can be reduced to power-point.
Would Lincoln have put the Gettysberg Address on Power-Point?
Would Franklin Roosevelt have put anything he ever said in a Power-Point presentation?
Skip the power-point. Look me in the eye and tell me what you want to do. I can understand it without the C.B. DeMille special effects. If you can’t explain it without the Power-Point, you don’t understand what you want to do.

“The only thing worse than a presentation which sucks is a presentation which sucks and you don’t know how much longer it will suck.”
Some of you have been asking for me to put up my fantastic and in-depth interview with Guy. So here it is – Form…

Have to say, you’re selling yourself short if you think this is only applicable to entrepreneurs and venture capital. I’m an academic (a catch-all term for someone who spends most of his time with his nose in a book and has very little chance of seeing the kind of money a successful entrepreneur would make), but the same basic principle apply, and they apply in an awful lot of situations. The most obvious of course is conference lectures. It is becoming more and more common (even in dusty disciplines like mine: literature) to utilize technology in a presentation, and all that you’ve said is true of a venture capitalist is also true of a conference audience. It’s also true, however, in print: particularly in terms of trying to sell yourself to a publisher. Finally, though some of my colleagues forget this, it is true of teaching. Students, whatever we choose to believe, can only digest so much information at a time, can only read print that is so small, and have short attention spans. So you are actually much wiser than you know, but I definitely like the easy formula you’ve created.

A couple of years ago I led a panel on online learning among nonprofit organizations at N-TEN’s National Technology Conference. As it happened, Guy Kawasaki was one of the keynote speakers at the conference, and I had the pleasure of

1) By the way check this company Medefile International. They are the market leader in a $30 billion industry. This industry is starting just now, they have a lot of room to grow. They have teamed up to bring personal health records using Apple’s iphone. Their stock is going to hit through the roof. People who get in and purchase early will reap a truck load of money. Their stock symbol is MDFI.OB. Check it out.
2) By the way check this company MDFI. Their stock is going to hit the roof because of the recent announcements with bringing personal health information through iphone. Folks who get in now will see this stock price increase multiple times. Also check this Webpage where they have some more information about the stock http://www.growurmoney.com/medefile/
blog.theinvestmentmachine.com/guest-blogger.html
hyipblog.nobshyip.net
will_johnston.blogspot.com/2007/05/seeking-good
www.blogcatalog.com/post-tag/investment
www.fool.com

Ive been a fan of Guy Kawasaki since I attended his lecture at the University of Minnesota a few months back (his 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint has revolutionized the way I present notes to students in my English composition classes). In a blog p…

As an intrapreneur you will have great ideas all the time (at least I have :-)). After thinking a little bit more of them, the most “great” ideas, are not that “great” anymore. But occasionaly you really have an idea, you are so convinced of, that you …

quotin…
Nothing really important can be reduced to power-point.
Would Lincoln have put the Gettysberg Address on Power-Point?
Would Franklin Roosevelt have put anything he ever said in a Power-Point presentation?
Skip the power-point. Look me in the eye and tell me what you want to do. I can understand it without the C.B. DeMille special effects. If you can’t explain it without the Power-Point, you don’t understand what you want to do.
im my humble opinion, a Powerpoint presentation could help you pitch your idea 1000 times better than pages of business plans…

quotin…
Guy –
You recommend (in your book “The Art of the Start”) that people only use dark colored backgrounds on PowerPoints. I was always told to only use LIGHT colored backgrounds so that meeting attendees could take notes on the printed presentation. Any thoughts on this?
dear kevin,
i always use a dark background presentation, but when i print it, i add a space with lines for notes:) it’s the best way in my opinion!

This regime makes presentations better. Thanks. Still, ppt is a monologue at core – unable to adjust to a welcome, hopefully, new idea-detour that could arise between slide 4 and 5 making 6,7…obsolete.

geovisit(); Here’s a quick summary of the TC40 discussion on getting funded. First, if you’re like most of us– that is, not from Stanford, and not with serial credentials– the overall message was to just focus on bringing the…

I’ll admit straightaway that I’m a sucker for good presenters. It’s kind of a sad infatuation, actually, since they’re such a rare breed these days. Much has been written about different techniques for giving explosive, emotion-filled presentations (My…

This is the second post in our series on how to run a startup and develop a product. In part one, How To Bootstrap Your Startup, we outlined the process of bootstrapping your company into existence. In this post, we…

I suggest to bloggers such as yourself: please get to the point soonest. For example, “The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint: It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.” And then the 10 point list. The following text could have the rest, the clever chatter, and other details. There is so much to read these days, I wonder why people post two or three paragraphs of usually not-funny, not-interesting text. At least, I wonder this when I read info-type articles. I read your article for the info, which I liked, and thank you for it. Sorry for my own wordiness.

Ever make a Powerpoint? Of course you have and in high school we do it a lot. But sadly most of them are BORING AS HELL!
Until Guy Kawasaki came along, most people would type everything they could onto their Powerpoint into tiny 3 point font and then j…

LOL. Entertaining post, but ultimately great advice on presenting. Being a designer of high-end PowerPoints for several years now, I can say that you are on to something here. It’s true about font sizes…people forget when they are laying it out on their screen that the text will look tiny when viewed from a distance, even on a large screen. I especially liked the part about it taking 40 minutes to get a Windows laptop to work with the projector. 🙂

It’s Halloween today, and I have a scary topic to discuss. No, this is not about ghost or goblins or even terrorism, wildfires, or avian flu. No, I’m here to discuss the horror of online slide shows.
Despite Edward Tufte’s PowerPoint critique,
slide s

Eric Feng on the Public Speaking Blog recently posted 250 Things You Wish You Know That Will Guarantee Your Speaking Success. Im skeptical when I read phrases such as guarantee your speaking success, and Im even more skeptic…

The stock has gained 150% from Oct 8, 2007 to Oct 22, 2007.
By the way check this company MDFI. Their stock is set to increase because of their association with Apple iphone and Complete Care Medical. Find more about this company and stock http://www.growurmoney.com/medefile/

This rule is really becoming famous. I read about the 10/20/30 rule in the printed version of German business magazine “Wirtschaftswoche” (kind of Business Weekly for German speaking countries).
They covered Powerpoint’s 20th birthday and elaborated on Guy’s advice in a separate text box (his name was mentioned)!

Have you ever seen Don McMillan’s presentation on how to give a PowerPoint presentation? You can find him easily on YouTube. He’s a former engineer and now a comedian. He makes good points on how to give a PowerPoint presentation, but in a funny way…

Although I’ve only seen a few pitch presentations, I would say that instead of making the rule 10 slides, make it 10 concepts, because sometimes you may want to have say 3 or 4 slides to convey a concept.
That and I’ve always been a huge fan of the Steve Jobs keynotes. 🙂 Great Article. There are far to many bad presentations out there.

When we posted our question on www.linkedin.com about the worst sales cliches, we received a fairly decent number of responses that made their way into our Twelve Days of Sales Cliches diddy.
One of the responses inspired this post.
From …

I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

There’s an interesting post from a few weeks back by Guy Kawasaki in an article entitled “How to pickup a VC.” While it’s a short piece illustrating how boneheaded “attention grabbers” will work against you with VCs, I think it’s actually quite a good …

I frequently find myself presenting using slides and always feel like I am not doing as good a job as can be done. I am very interested in effective presentation methods. Seth Godin has periodically written about the topic and…

nice tips, however they are completely irrelevant in my industry… often times we have 50, 60, 70+ page decks for presentations running for 8 hours or more. 30 point font, while nice doesn’t always work with graphs, finance, org charts, etc…

This is great. Thanks. Presentations are hard enough. Also, Dude, If you haven’t already, test for MTHFR gene mutations and supplement accordingly. Ménière’s and its symptoms are tied to this genetic lapse. MDs don’t think about this as much as they should, let alone know about it. Pioneers like Dr. Ben Lynch and Dr. Amy Yasko are good places to glean more info.

I tried the last suggestion “find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s your optimal font size” for my high school class – but the kids still couldn’t read the 8 point font. I guess I’ll never get this new approach to presentations…